Tuesday, 31 January 2012

The decision was welcome only in that it let the pusillanimous Government off a political hook, and only the right thing in that it scored a point for a signally opportunistic Opposition. Mr Hester's submission to the baying of the mob will have no i...

This is no defence of Fred the Shred. His hubris and bad judgement drove RBS almost to bankruptcy, forcing the taxpayer to step in with £45bn to prevent the bank dragging the whole economy down with it. But, although undoubtedly incompetent, Mr Goodw...

There has been a fall of almost 10 per cent in applications from students in England, who will have to pay the higher fees, compared with a much smaller fall for students in Scotland. While the drop in England is not as steep as many had feared – and...

The surprising result of this terrible failing in my character is that I find myself in deep sympathy with Newt Gingrich, who has been forced to stop playing the Rocky theme tune at his campaign events after the song's writer found out what he was up...

In order to help shore up our corporate and banking sectors, and keep executive pay internationally competitive, the Government is helpfully cutting my mum's pension credit by £2 a week. I would like to employ her to do some work for me, but I cannot...

Having said that, the Government is quite right that vocational courses should not count as GCSE equivalents in school league tables. A focus on rigorous exams in core subjects – particularly English and maths – is essential in assessing school perfo...

Against this background, efforts to secure a UN mandate for the Arab League peace plan that President Assad so mendaciously signed up to in December are urgent. The draft resolution calls for an end to violence on both sides of the conflict and requi...

It's equally hard to maintain the pathos during an email exchange with your heartbroken friend while the sidebar is shouting about online dating and losing weight. It can feel a little like they're trawling through our subconscious.So opting out of b...

You wouldn’t forgive me, for instance, if I devoted this column to the case for the alternative vote, several months after the British people, in all their fearful ignorance,turned it down at a referendum. But after a canine encounter this weekend, a...

I detect a commonality with all that is wrong in corporate Britain at the moment. The bosses reserve the cream for themselves and their cronies, the price is picked up by the consumer or taxpayer and the workers, in this instance the athletes, are no...

The results reversed the findings of a German survey two years ago, which appeared to confirm the traditional stereotype of men as better parkers. Several possible conclusions could be drawn. One: that women have improved their parking over that time...

Environmentalists are especially displeased because these 4,000 acres sit within the Leuser Ecosystem, a theoretically highly protected national park, which is home to 91 per cent of the 6,624 surviving Sumatran orangutans. While odd-looking and seem...

But all around me people are clamouring for attention, making snap decisions about their behaviour based upon a rapid calculation of how many hits it might get on YouTube if someone was filming it. I saw a bloke standing proudly in the middle of a pa...

You want to teach a child about self-discipline, about caring about others, about "doing the right thing"? Smacking won't do it. All it shows them is that you've lost control, at the very point where you're trying to teach them about control. Sure th...

Americans don't apologise for their machismo. We have stifled resentment and The Bill. But last week while travelling around Arizona in a rented car – my first time driving in the States – I realised that there's one count on which the Brits hit hard...

Obviously, this has given me my first three chapters – Chapter 1: Overnight Pasta The Overnight Way, Chapter 2: Planning Meals A Minimum of 50 Hours In Advance, and Chapter 3: Watching Cookery Shows With The Sole And Pointless Intention Of Sneering ....

Apart from the series' co-creator, Jean Marsh, as Rose the housekeeper, there's a new cast of characters including a butler with "a past", a "brooding" Indian private secretary and a "feisty" debutante. The mix of domestic intrigue, master-and-servan...

It is the effect of declining births combined with lengthening lives which is causing challenges for our economic and social systems. At a time when longevity is requiring increased investment in long-term care and pensions, the number of younger wor...